200 missing posters left outside Home Office in demonstration

200 missing children posters have been dumped outside the Home Office today (Tuesday 31st January) by queer activist group Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants, to protest children missing from hotels housing asylum seekers.

Home Office officials were confronted at 8am this morning by the sight of 200 missing posters,  which called the “Home Office-enabled disappearance” an “ inevitable result of the Hostile Environment.”

The posters, alongside two large missing poster signs, were placed by campaigners from Lesbian and Gays Support The Migrants (LGSMigrants) to demand that the government is held accountable for the disappearance of at least 200 children migrant children and an end to the Hostile Enviroment policy.

Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick told MPs last Wednesday that of the 4,600 child asylum seekers without an adult who had arrived in the UK since 2021, 440 had gone missing and only half had returned.

Sam Björn, a spokesperson for LGSMigrants, says: “Children have been racially abused and threatened with violence for over a year in Home Office hotels and this government is only now admitting that hundreds of children in their care have gone missing. This is state-sanctioned violence.

“While officials will try to shrug off responsibility, we say this government can and must keep migrant children safe. Today we demand an end to the Hostile Environment, safe passage for all asylum seekers and justice for these missing children.”

NOTES FOR EDITORS 

For further comments, please contact Sam Björn on lgsmigrants@gmail.com. 

Images are available to download here. 

Demonstrations are taking place in cities across the UK for International Migrants Day. 

Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants are a group of queer activists who stand in solidarity with all migrants and refugees. Through fundraising and creative direct action, they fight back against the hostile environment and reject racist narratives that pit queer communities and migrants against one another. Inspired by the 1980s group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, made famous by the film Pride, they build on a proud history of queer solidarity to say: no one is illegal. See www.lgsmigrants.com for more information. Instagram: @lgsmigrants Twitter: @lgsmigrants ; www.facebook.com/lgsmigrants